Toward the Unknown

As the Space Race ensues, seven pilots set off on a path to become the first American astronauts to enter space. However, the road to making history brings forth momentous challenges.

The first pilot to leave Earth's atmosphere lands, then vanishes; but something with a craving for blood prowls the countryside...

Jim is a test pilot. His wife Ann and best friend Gunner try their best to keep him sober. But the life of a test pilot is anything but safe.

The efforts of test pilot John Mitchell to make a better life for his wife Mary and their two children seem doomed to failure and he blames himself. At the Conway Aero-Manufacturing Company of Wolverhampton, Mitchell is to take the company's new rocket-propulsion transport plane up for tests, fully loaded and carrying two important passengers - Ministry official Crabtree and buyer's representative Ashmore. Mitchell learns from his boss, Reg Conway, that if Ashmore does not recommend the plane, the company will be out of business and Mitchell out of a job, since the plane is not even insured as the firm's entire capital is tied up in the plane. Aloft, an engine catches fire and the passengers and other crew bail out, but Mitchell refuses to obey orders to jettison the plane in the Irish Sea.

X-15 is a 1961 movie that tells a fictionalized account of the X-15 research rocket plane, the men who flew it and the women who loved them.

The story concentrated on a group of test pilots, busily experimenting with a revolutionary all-plastic airplane. Ace flyboy Brad Farrell (Richard Arlen) is determined to prove the practicality of the new aircraft, designed by Professor Blake (Thomas Ross), father of Brad's sweetheart Carol (Jean Parker). Back on solid ground, Brad must vie for Carol's attentions with his own brother, engineer Doug Farrell (Don Castle).

A disgraced pilot determines to regain the respect of both his son, now a test pilot for the Army, and the men he once flew with.

A draftswoman, the sister of an aging, alcoholic pilot, secretly uses her brother's ideas to solve design problems for an experimental military plane in an attempt to save the company and salvage her brother's reputation.

Jerry tries to out compete his older brother Cass, a lieutenant Naval aviator. Cass is both tough on and protective of his brother, but Jerry can give it right back.

A test pilot and his weather observer develop a "robot" control so airplanes can be flown without pilots, but enemy agents get wind of it and try to steal it or destroy it.

A look at the life of the astronaut, Neil Armstrong, and the legendary space mission that led him to become the first man to walk on the Moon on July 20, 1969.